Hello! Welcome to the December newsletter. Read on for announcements from Ruby Central and a report of the OSS work we’ve done from the previous month.

RubyGems News

In November, we released RubyGems 3.5.23 and Bundler 2.5.23. These releases bring a series of enhancements and bug fixes designed to improve the overall developer experience with RubyGems. Notable improvements include validating the user input encoding for gem CLI arguments and ensuring the--enable-load-relative binstubs prolog works correctly when Ruby is not installed in the same directory as the binstub. Additionally, we updated the --ext=rust option to support compiling native extensions from source and resolved an issue where bundle check could sometimes lock gems under the wrong source.

Some other important accomplishments from the team this month include:

Welcoming First-Time Contributors

We’re thrilled to see an influx of new contributors and are focusing on making contributions seamless and enjoyable.

• @soda92, a new Ruby enthusiast working on Windows, contributed extensively by:
  • Improving setup documentation for Windows developers.
  • Fixing broken links, unifying documentation, and enhancing the README to better explain what RubyGems is.
  • Adding debugging instructions for Windows, improving RSpec tests, and fixing a bundle exec issue on Windows.
• @andrew enhanced bundle fund by creating its missing man page and extended his work to cover other missing man pages. He also added a spec to ensure all Bundler commands remain fully documented.
• @jeromedalbert has been a consistent contributor, helping with issue triaging, documentation, and bug fixes. Notably, he updated the CONTRIBUTING guide link, fixed issues with bundle remove, and added the spec for ensuring command documentation.
• @marcoroth and @gemmaro made their first contributions by improving the default output of bundle gem.

We deeply appreciate the efforts of all contributors in making RubyGems and Bundler better for everyone! 🎉

Auditing and Updating Vendored Dependencies to the Latest Versions

• November and December are dedicated to thorough housekeeping to prepare for the final releases of RubyGems and Bundler. This includes updating all development and test dependencies, either via Dependabot PRs or manually, and ensuring compatibility with the latest Ruby patch levels, including Ruby 3.4. Daily CI against ruby-head has also been verified as green.
• We also improved license management by fixing the weekly automated PR process for new SPDX licenses and updating the license list with the latest additions. These updates ensure a polished and reliable release for all users.

Bundler 2.6 and RubyGems 3.6 Coming Soon

• The upcoming releases of Bundler 2.6 and RubyGems 3.6, set for early December, include significant improvements and new features. The checksums feature is now ready for beta release, with fixes based on early feedback. Resolution enhancements bring smarter auto-fixing of incorrect lockfiles, better handling of git dependencies, and improved conservativeness of bundle install . We’ve also reverted to the previous git gems cache format to resolve adoption issues while retaining critical fixes.
• Additional updates include improved lockfile support for users switching between stable and development Ruby versions, security enhancements to better redact credentials in Bundler outputs, and performance improvements like parallelized bundle install --local and performance-focused RuboCop checks.

In November, RubyGems gained 194 new commits contributed by 18 authors. There were 3,441 additions and 1,360 deletions across 248 files.

RubyGems.org News

The updates made this month to RubyGems.org reflect a strong commitment to improving user experience, enhancing security, and modernizing the platform. Sponsored hosting for RubyGems.org in November was provided by AWS, Fastly, and DataDog.